After listening to the stories, Jessica Aranda shifted the talk at the weekly meeting at the Albany Park worker's center. How, she wondered aloud, can they help the day workers?

What about teaching them English, computer or construction skills, she suggested. "We have to improve their skills to make them more marketable."

It wasn't easy launching the Latino Union, which works on behalf of day laborers. And it hasn't gotten any easier four years after the agency opened a small storefront at 3416 W. Bryn Mawr Ave. in the Albany Park neighborhood so the workers do not have to stand on street corners to get hired. Chicago also has four main hiring corners for day laborers.

Yet the problem faced by Aranda, executive director of the Latino Union, pales in comparison to other places across the U.S. where a groundswell of anti-immigrant sentiment has led to demonstrations, counterdemonstrations, legal battles and the closing of some centers.

Indeed, day labor supporters worry that many of the nation's 60 centers like Chicago's, as well as the more than 1,000 street corners nationwide where day laborers gather, will face problems in the coming months as rising unemployment and anti-illegal-immigrant attitudes congeal into a potent brew.

"More people at day labor corners and less people going to jobs will create a perfect storm," predicted Chris Newman, an official with the Los Angeles-based National Day Labor Organizing Network, which links day-labor groups across the U.S.

"The problem is, as day laborers have been objectified as the face of illegal immigration, it creates conditions for further abuse," he added.

Protests in Phoenix

Salvador Reza can attest to the impact that attitudes over immigration have had on the day-labor center he runs in Phoenix, one of only two in Arizona.

"For over 100 days we've had vigilante groups outside our doors," he said. "They shout. They take pictures. Many people are afraid to pick up laborers at the center."

Because of the protests and a tough new Arizona law for employee identification this year, the center daily finds work for less than half of the workers it did a year ago, he said.

Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which takes a hard line on illegal immigrants, agrees that the reaction against worker centers like the one in Phoenix is growing. "In the absence of the federal government doing anything meaningful about immigration, there is a dramatic growth in communities taking matters into their own hands," he said.

"It's the reaction to no action," he said. "They are open-air markets for illegal workers, and who is getting hurt? It is U.S. workers who need better wages and U.S. workers who play by the rules."

In Chicago, Aranda is credited with keeping tensions down as the idea of a work center has taken root.

"What's remarkable about Jessica is that she came of age as the movement emerged, and she has managed with a steady hand to steer the organization while the political scene has often been inhospitable," said Nik Theodore, director of the University of Illinois at Chicago's Center for Economic Development.

Newman agreed, saying that Aranda's "positive energy" rubs off on day laborers as well as those who help them.

Fewer jobs, less pay

Still, Aranda sees a list of growing problems, fueled by the construction industry's collapse and bad economy, for day workers. In the Chicago area, day laborers' wages have dropped from $12 to $10 an hour and down to $8 for those hungry for work, she said.

Despite the agency's safety workshops and coordination with state and federal worker-safety agencies, Aranda said workers also continue to get hurt on risky jobs.

Similarly, many workers are still cheated out of their wages, even though the agency has helped them to organize and go after employers who haven't paid.

There's also the problem that organizer Eric Rodriguez has noticed lately.

There seem to be younger workers on the street corners, many coming from rural farms in Central America.

Aranda, 28, rose up from working at the Latino Union as a college intern and volunteer and is in line to join the organization's board, a volunteer position. Step by step, it's been a learning experience.

No nationality limits

The agency helps low-wage immigrant Latinos, but the worker center also serves Poles, Mongols, Russians, Puerto Ricans and some native-born U.S. citizens.

Everyone is served, she said, and no questions are asked about immigration status. Aranda prefers to call them international businessmen. Some are professionals who haven't found their place in the U.S.; others are skilled construction workers.

The "only way that works" with day laborers, Aranda said, is involving them in decisions.She has also learned to be a diplomat and to temper her emotions, especially when dealing with people who may not feel the same way she does about the challenges faced by day workers.

Aranda, who comes from Albuquerque and a family who lived in the Rio Grande Valley for nine generations, also has dealt with doubts about a young woman running her kind of organization.

"Six years ago when I started, people said, 'She'll be gone soon,' but I've stuck to it."

As she talked, some workers sat and waited..

Normally they would be out working, but they do that a lot less often these days.